I’ve had a lot of readers ask that I continue to explore the issues of civility as it relates to technology. There seems to be a great deal of interest around the subject of civility and social networking, in particular. While I’ve covered cyber-bullying and the enabling of incivility by the anonymity provided by the internet, I hadn’t thought about the mechanics of incivility in the social networking space until just recently.

I think the reason that I haven’t dug into social networking as a source of uncivil behaviors is because, like you, I enjoy using technologies like Facebook and LinkedIn. I like re-connecting with friends and colleagues that I haven’t seen for months, years or even decades. I enjoy it when I receive a request to connect to someone that I first met when I was 6 years old but haven’t seen since graduation day from high school. It hasn’t been until the last year or so that I’ve been forced to acknowledge the dark side to social networking; a messy underbelly that most of us react to by “de-friending” those in our circle of connections and acquaintances. And I’ve finally come to grips with what fuels that uglier side of reconnecting via the internet. It comes down to following a simple guideline your grandmother probably taught you.

Before I dive into that particular re-discovery, I think it is worthwhile to visit a component of this issue that I’ve written about before. It is really important that we accept and understand that social networking is not the same as having a relationship with someone. Connecting with someone on Facebook is not the same thing as a healthy and helpful friendship. It isn’t the distance or the digital nature of social networking that makes this so – people who are truly friends can certainly agree that social networking tools can be a useful communication channel. The difference is, true friends know that social networking isn’t the ONLY communication channel. In fact, true friends will certainly know that social networking is, at best, a sub-optimal communication channel.

The problem with social networking today is that we all fall into the trap of thinking that the short updates provided by a “friend” that we haven’t been in the same room with for 3, 7 or 20 years is a complete picture of everything that that person is, was and will be. I’ve said before that familiarity breeds contempt. In the case of social networking, familiarity often breeds an attitude of entitlement.

Because I have watched you post updates, comments and photos for the past year – I feel entitled to share my observations, opinions and even my beliefs in the hopes of “helping” you. Sometimes we invite this often unwanted feedback upon ourselves, by sharing too much information on our social networking pages. “Drunk dialing” has been replaced with “drunk updating” – and I can tell you for certain that receiving an update from an inebriated friend, co-worker or family member is never anything but an awkward experience. Well, maybe not always awkward – there are those moments in time when “drunk updating” can be pretty funny, but most times we’re laughing at you and not with you.

What I find most interesting about behaviors on Facebook and through other social networking outlets is the complete lack of regard for a simple rule that I’m certain you’ve heard, or may have even been taught to you by your parents or grandparents.

Quick, what are the three subjects you never discuss at the dinner table?

Sex – Religion – Politics

Think about the intimacy of a dinner with friends. A social occassion sharing dinner and conversation with people you haven’t seen for, let’s say 14 years. There you are enjoying the opportunity to reconnect, when your dinner partners launch into a lengthy monologue on why they think our current elected officials are awful. Or maybe you initiate a conversation about your ingrained hatred for a particular religious faith. Or even worse, you start up a discussion about your wild weekend in Cabo where you blacked out at least 4 times, lost your digital camera and you keep chasing down embarassing pictures posted on the internet of your “private moments”.

I’m guessing that in any of these instances, you’d pretty much determine that having dinner together again would not be happening. Ever.

When it comes to civil behaviors in America, particularly in reference to the use of technology, I feel compelled to emphasize a very important reminder. Freedom of speech is NOT the same as freedom from responsibility for what you say. Disparaging someone’s faith, political beliefs, sexual orientation, gender identity, financial situation, social standing, socio-economic theories, race, cultural background – are making these types of inflammatory comments the kind of things that “friends” do to each other? If the entire premise of Facebook is to “friend” someone – why on earth would you use that networking channel to treat a “friend” so poorly? We tend to only register horror and concern about the power of social networking when the abuse of the technology by a bully or a group of bullies results in the suicidal death of a teenager. But the simple day-to-day interactions of appending comments to our friend’s updates in the social networking space have power over our lives and our self-image. An acidic comment by a “friend” to an update we’ve made or a picture we’ve posted can, and frequently does, ruin our entire day. Words have power. And those words stay on your Facebook page – they don’t just disappear on the wind (well, unless you delete them – but if you have to delete a comment it pretty much proves the point that your “friend’s” comment struck a nerve).

When participating in the social networking community, we would be wise to heed the words of author Chuck Palahniuk. “Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can hurt like hell.”

Or maybe my mother had the best advice on the subject of how to treat people in a civil manner. “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”

I have taken some time off writing and speaking about civility, mainly to recover from my own experience of running for public office. I am firmly convinced that there is no better way to truly understand how the American political system actually operates than to run for elected office. I am equally convinced that there is no better way for a person to lose hope in their fellow citizens and to become a hardened cynic towards the degeneration of the American political system than to run for elected office. Fortunately, the lessons of the former condition have helped me to understand the underpinnings of civility in American society even better. The lessons of the latter condition were only temporary and were off-set by the sheer number of amazing people I met throughout the course of the 15 months I spent campaigning.

I have said, on numerous occasions, that I do not look to politicians or the American political process for working examples of civility. Politics is the dark side of the more civilized practice of statecraft. Statesmanship, diplomacy, peace-making; these are terms that illicit good feelings and high thoughts when we hear them. But when we hear the word “politics”, the most frequent responses we all share are those of revulsion, disgust, disappointment and irritation. Whether it is politics in the workplace, in our local community or on a national level, we place the practice of politics far beneath most of the least desirable traits and activities known to man.

Why is it that politics, which finds its origins in something as noble as statesmanship and diplomacy, is considered to be such an ugly and uncivil enterprise – particularly in the highly contentious and venomous atmosphere of the last 10 years in the United States? It was while running for a state level elected office that I believe I found the answer.

Politics in America, when it has been exercised most effectively, has gravitated toward the more “noble” end of the scale. By that, I mean that effective politics results when it is most like diplomacy, consensus building and compromise. Think about your initial gut reaction to that last word – compromise. How you feel about compromise has a large part to play in what I’ve learned about civility in politics; a point I’ll revisit towards the end of this posting.

If we think about the current political atmosphere in the United States, what terms come to mind?

Partisanship?

Gridlock?

Incivility?

Today, politics is most certainly pegged to the “worse than the practice and people that scam senior citizens” end of the spectrum.

When I ran for office, I was told on multiple occasions that my opinion or a position on a particular issue didn’t “fit” with that person’s expectations of the political party I was affiliated with. Time and again I was told “I like you and I think you’re the better candidate, but I can’t vote for you because you’re in the wrong party”. It was this constant exposure to the process in which people rationalized voting against their own personal desires, and even against their own interests, that brought me to an understanding of why politics in America is so uncivil today. Politicians and many Americans have convinced themselves that politics is a zero-sum game. The political discourse in the United States is based on one simple assumption that is being reinforced by the two primary political parties every single day in the media. Republicans and Democrats alike have usurped a line from a 1980’s movie and made it the guiding star of their political compasses – “There can be only one!”

In high school government classes around the nation, students are taught that we have a representative government. We’re told that our exceptional form of government has been a successful “experiment” (Thomas Jefferson’s own description) because of the strength of our democratic principles. And yet, we have witnessed a political devolution in America since the end of President Eisenhower’s administration. Win-at-all-costs are now demanded of everyone from Presidents to school board members. Our leaders talk endlessly about how great democracy is for every other country, but then systematically take every step possible to destroy their opposing party colleagues and invalidate their positions, beliefs and proposals. In America, politics has become a zero sum equation. There must be a winner and there must be a loser. There are no win-win scenarios in our nation – if you believe what our political leaders are saying. If one side wins, inevitably their win will result in the complete collapse of the United States as we know it – or so the opposition will state in a press conference immediately after a bill has been passed.

If someone must win and someone must lose, the opportunity for civility to manifest is greatly reduced. And let’s face it, in today’s political environment, the vast majority of our leaders don’t want the other side to lose – they want the other side’s position destroyed entirely. It is this environment that has resulted in the collapse of civility in our political discourse. It is this environment that has invalidated the necessity for the practice of “respecting the office” of our Congressmen and Congresswomen, of our Senators, of our County Commissioners and of our Commander in Chief. In a world where the only outcome is that I must win and you must lose, civility’s days are certainly numbered.

The obvious flaw in this thinking is that it is simply not true. Life is not a zero sum game. Over our lifetimes, wins and loses are not balanced out in such a way that we have accomplished nothing on the eve of our final day on earth. Our gains do not ultimately equal our losses such that no value is generated. Humanity has moved forward because of the great leaps and bounds taken when people come together to achieve more than the individual outputs of a single person. In America, it is not about “us” versus “them”. We are a nation founded, very explicitly, on “we”. During times of great cataclysm and catastrophe, “we” the people have shown that regardless of our thoughts, ideals or beliefs that life is win-win, not win-lose.

So, think about that word mentioned above; compromise. If your gut reaction to that word is that it is unacceptable or that it suggests weakness, maybe you’re part of that population that believes there is only one right answer, one clear path, one simple solution. If the idea of our elected officials compromising for a better outcome for everyone in our country is distasteful, then maybe you’ve bought into the belief that life is a zero sum game.

Like all subjects, when we commit ourselves to a course of study and thought, we realize new discoveries almost every single day. I’ve written about anonymity, technology, sportsmanship, political protocol and garden variety manners. Obviously it is easy to point out the incivilities within our personal relationships, communities and even amongst the nations of the world. But my purpose was never to be solely a social commentator. First and foremost, I want to find pathways and solutions to re-position civility as the framework of choice for our behaviors. An observer is interested, but a participant is committed. I don’t want to sit back and write about the obvious, I want to participate with you in finding a better way.

I haven’t focused a great deal of attention on the most obvious outward manifestation of civility; manners. Limiting the conversation about civility to manners is like to trying to understand the subject of mathematics by focusing only on subtraction and addition. But there are definitely lessons to be learned by considering what manners mean in the larger context of civility and incivility.
There is a unique characteristic about manners that few of us recognize. Which fork to use? What salutation to use when greeting someone? How soon after an event do you send a thank you note? Manners are not about how others are supposed to treat you. Manners are not a guide for others to follow when they interact with you. Manners are about me. Manners are about what I do. How I react. How I respond.

This is a terribly important truth. If manners are about how we are supposed to behave on an individual level, then when we complain about the decline and sometimes complete evaporation of manners in day-to-day life we are really pointing out the failure of personal responsibility; the failure of what I am supposed to do. We are saying that the people around us have walked away from their personal responsibility to monitor, manage and modify their own actions. When people say that manners are not important, they are abdicating others and themselves of their personal responsibility for their own behavior.

Many readers might quickly suggest that the “golden rule” and the many variations of it expressed in several religions and philosophy must have been a guiding force in the development of each civilization’s rules for manners. But I am not so convinced. I am not ashamed, in the least, to say that I am an evangelical Christian, a follower of Christ – even when I know that many readers may immediately apply an unfair stereotype or expectation to who they think I am. The reason I bring my personal faith to this discussion is in the context of my conclusion that the “golden rule” is actually an inborn part of the human spirit, and not necessarily a guiding principle driven by religion; any religion.

I could point to the moment when Jesus Christ schooled the Pharisees and Sadducees on the greatest commandment and on the second ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’ in Matthew 22:34-40 and say ‘see, Christianity is all about the golden rule’. Obviously the flaw in my statement is that the force of Christianity and even the words of the Bible have been used to justify two millennia of decidedly uncivil behaviors; from the absolute power of monarchy to slavery. Even though the texts of many of the major faiths have a variation of ‘love your neighbor’ not all of them do. And, whether Hebrew or Hindu or Buddhist, it is difficult to attribute all the good things in manners and interpersonal behaviors to faith without acknowledging all the bad things in manners and interpersonal behaviors done in the name of faith.

The driving force for manners, then, can’t be fully explained by religion. In fact, you can’t convincingly argue that manners are even guided by ‘do naught unto others”. Manners, when executed with pure intention, are more closely aligned to something not recorded in any text that I’ve found – “I will do the right thing regardless of what you do”.

Ultimately, maybe this is why we perceive there to be such a decline in manners. Maybe our collective cultural obsessions with consumerism, power, control, winning, dominating, subjugating or demanding that our opinion or belief is better than your opinion or belief has short-circuited our very nature; the inborn nature in all of us to sacrifice just a bit of our self-interest to honor the intrinsic value in another human being. Maybe we, as individuals, have decided that what we want has become so all important that sacrificing any of it is no longer worth our time or effort. Subduing our desires by conforming to some archaic rule about soup spoons is simply too much work. We can’t be bothered or troubled with even the simple manners of holding a door or saying thank you.

The next time you find yourself irritated or chagrined by another person’s lack of manners, take a second to remember that bringing manners back is about what I do. Regardless of what they do.

For a number of months, with so many other events to write about on the world scene, I have not fulfilled my promise to discuss the second pillar of incivility. Several readers have kept me honest by sending emails to remind me of this and I want to take the time to complete the picture of the three key components of incivility. Once we’ve identified the root causes, we have a higher probability of finding solutions together.

Initially, I identified the core of incivility. The rise of the “I” centric world has been a destroyer of community, of personal relationship and ultimately of civility. If we extend the pillar analogy to include the foundation laid by the “I” centric position, we’d call “I” the stylobate of our temple of incivility. The stylobate is the uppermost step of the base used by the Greeks to provide a level footing for their columns.

On top of this base, we’ve identified the first pillar – the setting of the intrinsic value of life to zero. Our desensitization to the effect of inhumanity reinforces this notion that the value of human life is a zero. And, many events of the last year have raised a personal concern for me that we may be careening into a repeat of many points in history where the value of human life is considered to be a negative integer. This possibility should really give all of us pause. Think of what it means when someone, some government, some regime decides that the value of a single life is a negative number. To put it in non-mathematical terms; can we recall times in history when a body of people has been seen to add greater value to society if they are eliminated from this world? The result of life being assigned a zero is bad enough; an assignment of a negative value to life leads to entire villages, ethnicities, tribes, cultures and religious communities being hunted down and eliminated.

The second macro event that has led to the rise of incivility has been the explosion of consumerism, beginning slightly before the turn of the 20th century. To read about the beginnings of consumerist behavior, as practiced by the nouvelle riche and first robber barons, I highly recommend “The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt”. The book does a fantastic job of documenting the rise of a new breed of wealthy American; the self-made man. The explosion of wealth in this era led to a level consumption not entirely different from what we’ve seen in the 21st century. The successful man in the later 1800’s was defined by a massive home in Manhattan, a stable filled with prized racing horses, art from Europe lining his walls, a stunning wife turned out in the latest fashions and a penchant for playing the stock market as well as a card game or two.

The similarities to today’s consumer should not be discounted in the least; even if these gentlemen were buying carriages instead of Ferrari 458 Italia’s some 140 years ago. This time in American history was truly the beginning of an acquisition-oriented culture that eventually had Gordon Gekko as a poster child. Little did we know that a 1980’s fictional film and its villain would pale in comparison to the type of consumerist anti-heroes we’d see in Ken Lay, Bernie Ebbers, Bernie Madoff and Ramalinga Raju.

As I say so frequently in these postings, it is a very easy thing for us to look at these “bad guys” and wag a finger of shame. It is a much more difficult proposition to look at ourselves and see the same consumption-in-mass-quantities behaviors. But we have been a nation living on borrowed time and money. We have financed every conceivable trapping of excess with our home equity, our credit cards, revolving credit lines and unsecured loans. In the last 25 years, the need to have MORE has far surpassed the need to have enough. We stopped listening to our grandparents, who survived an economic disaster exponentially greater than the one we find ourselves mired in today. We forgot the lessons of history, where rampant speculation led to short-term material happiness but longer term financial misery over and over again.

Consumerism is a torpedo in the hull of civility. Now, don’t misinterpret what I am suggesting here. I love capitalism. I am just as guilty of riding the more-more-more wave. Seriously, when did I determine our family needed an Xbox 360, PS3 and a Wii? The problem that rabid consumerism creates is the belief that, much like a shark needs to keep swimming to survive; we must keep buying to live. And not just buying, but possessing. We must have the “it” Christmas present of the year. We have to have the latest super-star endorsed basketball shoes for our 3 year old. We need a faster boat, a faster car, a bigger house. How is it that our parents and grandparents were perfectly happy in an 1100 square foot ranch with a carport, but some couple just bought that ranch and sheared the roof off, added 4 more floors and a heli-pad on top – because it is in the “new” up and coming neighborhood?

People are dying in order to buy what they want. While it seems so absurd as to be impossible, people have gotten in to full blown fights and stores have dissolved into anarchist riots over $149.00 flat screen television sets. Guns have been drawn over dolls, toy hamsters, shoes and video games. Store employees have been trampled to death on Black Friday and consumers haven’t even stopped to wipe the blood from their sneakers – let alone try and help. Consumerism is simply the fiscal manifestation of the phenomenon I’ve already described; “I” versus “you”.

Beyond the impact to civility, the consequences of people buying and consuming multiple times more processed foods, manufactured vehicles and square feet than our very recent ancestors are nearly incalculable in terms of damage to our environment, communities and our fellow man.

The economic downturn is, thankfully, causing many people around this country and the world to assess what is truly important and necessary. We are learning the lessons of our grandparents, because we refused to learn from their experience. We have fulfilled George Santayana’s prophecy – we ignored history and now we must repeat it. As we have started buying locally, we remember that small business owners are our friends and neighbors. As we clear out closets, garages and attics and give away clothing, toys and furniture; we remember that we can make a difference in the lives of others in a very material way. As we remind our children that saving to buy something means so much more than buying it on credit. As we look at our home and say “it is a good house” instead of “lets add another 2200 square feet”. As we recognize that enough is not a bad thing, we are abandoning a pillar of incivility.

But, will we remember long enough to keep our desire for the next big Christmas fad from inspiring us to elbow another shopper in the face at 5:00 a.m. in the doorbusting-deals morning?

Civility in the work place is one of those subjects that most of us don’t put much thought towards. With all the rules, policies, guidelines, expectations and training, we usually are hypnotized into a false sense of comfort in our respective work environments. And yet, incivility in the work place is a real problem – with small incivilities stacking on top of each other until truly awkward or dangerous eruptions of uncivil behavior manifest.

Time and again, news stories snap us back into a reality that is much more dark and troubling than worrying about what the latest watercooler gossip is or guessing who is next to be let go. Just like in our schools, our courts and our Little League baseball diamond, there has been case after case of individuals walking into an office building or factory and opening fire on their co-workers; committing the ultimate act of incivility. I am certain that all of us have personally experienced the time-warp like transportation of the typical school yard bully, and their behaviors, to a corporate conference room filled with colleagues. We’ve witnessed behaviors in the workplace that range from petty insults to spit-slinging screaming matches. As with all other aspects of our society, the work place is just as vulnerable to uncivil, as well as inhumane, behaviors.

As I’ve stated many times in this blog, I am convinced that what we experience in the way of incivility in any environment isn’t an instantaneous phenomenon. Instead, incivilities that drive us to exasperation are iterative; small incivilities lead to larger incivilities and so on.

Which brings me to a business environment incivility that probably seems trivial to most people. While walking through the halls of a large corporation recently, I had to ask a colleague if it was “dress down” day. I’m not suggesting that I asked if it was “business casual day”, as the attire that I was seeing was several notches below casual. I saw everything from rumpled flannel shirts to day-glo fuschia thong tops peeking above a jeans waistline. I saw what has apparently become the official “bro” or “dude” uniform; flip flops with terribly worn jeans. This look gave me the distinct feeling that way too many middle-aged middle managers watch “The Big Lebowski” every weekend. There was certainly a “club” variation on the theme too, where the attire looked perfectly suited for an after party in the wee small hours of the morning. While dressy, the look came off as distinctly not the right kind of dressy.

So, I’m certain your wondering about what clothing has to do with civility. A lot more than we might care to admit. One of the key reasons for an increase in incivility has been explosion in the idea that we all know each other; I referred to this effect earlier in Familiarity Breeds Contempt for Civility. Many “old timers” lament the demise of professional attire in the workplace, without being able to articulate why. “It just looked better” or “I love neckties” aren’t really strong arguments to bring back the power suit and everything in your closet being a shade of navy blue.

When I dress like I’m raking leaves – and I am, in fact, holding a conference call with a key client, I’m setting myself up for a litany of uncivil behaviors from friends, colleagues and enemies. When we dress like we are going out dancing, or running off to the greasy burger joint down the road, or like we simply rolled out of bed and came to work we are exposing our personal selves to our professional colleagues. We are inviting people into our personal realm by dressing like we would if our friends (real friends) were coming over to watch the game, eat nachos and drink beer. Which serves as that jumping off point to being too familiar with each other. And, once we become familiar, we feel entitled to share opinions, glances, gestures, language and attitude that pushes the boundaries of civil behavior in the work place.

It isn’t that someone’s underwear hanging out of their pants is skanky. It is that someone’s underwear hanging out of their pants breeds a comfort level with that person that opens up a potential Pandora’s box of bad behavior – on both parties part. Okay, so I have to admit. It is skanky.

Clothing informs culture and behaviors. Before anyone gets overly concerned that bringing suits back to the workplace, or uniforms back to the shop floor will lead to a regimented and totalitarian dominated career experience – ask yourself if the “live and let live” business uncasual approach hasn’t caused the civility pendulum to swing too far in the opposite direction. I’m not asking for the resurrection of gray flannel (although it would be nice to see men’s dress hats make a comeback). I’m just asking that the “dudes” hang up their flannel and low rider jeans for sensible khakis and an iron.

Civility is about boundaries. Fashion in the workplace is an important,albeit overlooked, component of civility because it helps to subliminally enforce barriers that make us understand that we are at work to …well, work. Not bowl, cut the lawn, do the nasty dance, hunt turkey, root on our favorite NASCAR driver, collect phone numbers or go water skiing.

The availability of information, in both volume and speed, has been one of the key contributions made by technological innovation in fostering incivility. Familiarity, as the old saying goes, does breed contempt. But, the greater threat to civility and civil behaviors is most certainly the cloak and veil that technology now provides to each and every one of us in our dealings with each other.

It is a fascinating condition of the human race; that we embrace both the best and worst that a technology has to offer. While I will spend some time today writing about chat rooms, avatars and hate-speech camoflauged as political commentary – the tendency for humans to use and misuse an innovation applies to stone wheels just as much as it does to bits and bytes.

The lowly hammer; it is most commonly used to build things. Hammering nails and framing houses, or fixing the dog house are natural activities for this technological innovation that took us beyond pounding some form of a peg with a large rock. But, that same hammer on many occasions, has been wielded and brandished as a weapon. Pounding a nail or bashing a skull – humans seem to find the light and dark within every single implement. Guns, axes, dynamite, atom smashing, oxycontin; the list of innovations that we corrupt is as long as history itself.

Computer based technology is no different, but the consequences for civility are just as concerning. The darkest aspect of technology, even darker than our continuous exposure to on-line fraud and theft, is the lack of responsibility and accountability that the anonymity of a virtual personality provides. The disconnectedness of being constantly connected manifests in the tendency for human beings to say things in an internet chatroom or on a comment string associated with a news story that they would never, ever say in the presence of a real live human being.

As I have written before, I don’t find that I learn much about civility by observing or researching politicians or political analysts. We live in an age where conservatives use inflammatory words and phrases but deny that they have any responsiblity for the potential consequences should things get out of control. And, in this same age, liberals are screaming for a more civil discourse and the complete elimination from memory of any of the bad behaviors and vitriolic rhetoric that they leveraged when they were in the minority.

I’m reminded of what Will Rogers had to say about the state of political behavior in the United States some 80 years ago – “I bet after seeing us, George Washington would sue us for calling him “father.””

What I would ask of you is that you read the comments to this news article, as many of the 1265 as you can stomach. Rather than addressing whether Mr. LaHood’s argument is defensible (are conservative talk show hosts contributing to a decline in civility), the comments immediately focus on demanding that the reader subscribe to one political ideology or another. Since I am in the mood for quotes today, the seething anger and vicious statements made by commentators on this news story recalls a point by Oscar Wilde “Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.”

Hate, racism, rants, venom – all of these uncivil aspects of discourse, and more, manifest themselves in the comments to this news story. Many of the people on this comment thread could be your neighbors, friends, aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents, your boss or your community leaders. Unfortunately, we can’t tell, because no one knows for sure who they are really are. In fact, one of them might be you. With names like “theTruth”, “Troll”, “Legal American” and “Master Yoda” not only are we denied the opportunity to know who is writing, the writer is given carte blanche to be as uncivil as they want to be. Read some of the most antagonistic postings in this thread, and then wonder on whether the person who wrote it would be inclined to say the same thing – verbatim – in church or at a PTA meeting. Would they be so bold to stand up in a meeting of Rotarians, a Chamber of Commerce or a school board meeting and share the same sentiments? Not only is the answer a resounding “no”, most of these writers would be personally embarassed to make such offensive comments in any public setting.

But, the internet changes everything. The upstanding citizen within our community that deems the anonymous “tagging” of a train box car with graffiti that points out any number of social ills in our inner city as a blight on society, sees no parallel to their own anonymous “tagging” of news stories and blog posts in the same light. The graffiti artist is a social misfit (as opposed to an artist), but an anonymous commentator spouting a hate filled response is not? The anonymity of the internet has created an environment where the absolute worst aspects of our human nature manifest themselves; stalking, pedophilia, bullying to the point of driving someone to suicide, revenge postings of nude photographs of former girlfriends, boyfriends and spouses.

If you were invisible, and could not be held responsible for what you say or do – what would you do with such power? Maybe you don’t need to think about an answer to this thought experiment. Maybe all you need to do is re-read some of the postings you have made in the vast anonymity of the internet. Maybe being invisible has made us much less civil.

I have recently received a lot of requests to write about the effects that technology has had on civility and civil behaviors. Technology alone, or the innovation of new technologies, hasn’t had much of an impact on civility at all. But, the adoption of those technologies and how they are utilized has definitely contributed to incivility. As an example, the technological innovation that created the gun resulted in a device that could be used to feed and sustain my family through hunting, or fight a war. How a technology is used is the principle thing. The way that we use technology today has resulted in a phenomenon that can lead directly to incivility and bad behaviors.

I’ll use a personal example to illustrate this point.

A couple of years ago, I created a Facebook account. My original purpose for doing so was to stay in contact with immediate as well as extended family members. Sharing photos and updating aunts and uncles on the latest accomplishments of our children was a low-effort activity through this social networking tool. But, then I started to get requests from friends and acquaintances. Who was I to turn down a request from a neighbor or a friend that I participated in community events with?

Then, the circle expanded. People started connecting to me that I hadn’t seen or spoken to in 10, 15 or even 20 years. High school classmates and community theater colleagues, as well as their friends that I could barely remember. (Hi – I’m Billy’s 2nd cousin twice removed and we were at a party together once when we were 17 and I waved at you from across the yard. Friend me?)

Virtual communities and relationships have been in existence for a very long time. MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are simply the next generation of social interaction enabled by a faster disassociated medium. There have been many technologies that have displaced face-to-face interaction. While ink and paper is an older form than electronic bulletin boards, email, chat and networking sites, even this medium is young when compared to other ancient methods of communicating without standing in front of each other. The virtual relationship is nearly as old as man. What is different is the speed of the technology, the information made available by that technology and most importantly, the false sense of community and relationship that the adoption of these new virtual forums has created.

The problem that technology utilization introduces, in relation to civility, is the problem of familiarity. Which brings me back to my personal Facebook experience.

Many of the folks that I connected to that were old school mates from 20+ years ago have lived an entire lifetime without any interaction between us. Our entire worldview, if it has not changed dramatically, has at least been influenced by 20 additional years of experience and age. Some of us have lost parents, children and spouses to accidents and illness. Some of us battled drug or alcohol addictions successfully. Many of us married, then divorced, then remarried. Some of us have blended families of hers, mine and ours when it comes to children. Some of us survived traumatic events and all of us have navigated a course through life that has resulted in the changing or modification of our core beliefs and values.

So, we post little tidbits of information and updates to our Facebook pages. Since we do not have the context of the prior 20 years to consider, our understanding of a person comes from these fragments of data that we synthesize into an assumption about each other.

Then, it happens. We believe that we are “familiar” with our old classmate. We think we know what they believe, how they feel and what is important to them because we have followed their Tweets for a year. Familiarity can be a dangerous thing. Because I believe that I know someone, I tend to act as if I am entitled to give them advice, comment on their situation or question their beliefs. When I become familiar, the taboo topics that Grandma and Grandpa told us were inappropriate for dinner conversation (sex, religion, politics) become fair game for discussion. This familiarity isn’t just limited to old friends. We develop this same sense of familiarity with celebrities, political candidates, religious leaders, bloggers, cult personalities from YouTube and a myriad number of other people. Because we have known them in a virtual world, we truly believe that we know them in the real world.

Familiarity breeds a sense of entitlement. When we feel entitled, we don’t feel bound by any constraints or limitations when we interact with each other. Without constraints or limits, we run the risk of being uncivil. If I make a rude comment about organized religion or personal faith to an old friend on Facebook, without the knowledge that religion or faith played an integral part in my friend’s personal journey and survival of the death of their child – I have applied a framework of virtual familiarity to a social interaction, with the result being a very uncivil behavior.

Technology enables a level of virtual interaction that is faster, is saturated with more information and can be cloaked in anonymity. Separately, none of these technological improvements foster incivility. But, when taken in a combination that allows a technology user to assume that the familiarity they have gained in a virtual realm is of equal weight and quality to a true relationship with someone; this is where incivility can, does and will continue to rear a very ugly head in our society.

Real relationships based on an unshakable respect for the value of each person in that relationship creates an environment where being uncivil is very difficult. Virtual relationships based on snippets of information that create a false sense of community with a person simply results in a roadway without the guard rails necessary for consistently civil behavior.